I thought this board deserved to hear our story, as I blab it to my health food friends all the time. :-D Here it goes:
My dear poor vegan husband has had IBS-constipation all his life. It has always been an impedance to his normal daily life. His doctors, parents, and even his wife (yes, that's me) were *convinced* he didn't have enough fiber. To prove it, the first semester after we were married I switched us to 100% whole wheat bread and muffins at breakfast, piles and piles of veggies at dinner, and carrot and celery sticks every day at lunch. Super healthy, but he was in for it. Ever see someone spend over an HOUR in the bathroom? Just waiting?
Right away I was convinced he had celiacs disease. I mean, we ate plenty of whole wheat flour. So I got rid of all gluten products. Puffed rice or rice flour muffins for breakfast, carrot and celery sticks, corn tortillas and hummus for lunch, and even huge-er piles of veggies at dinner. No change. Still misery. Then I decided if he had celiac's disease, he wouldn't be able to tolerate veggie meat made of sietan (pure wheat gluten). So one night I made sietan pot roast with mashed potatoes and canned green beans, and waited for him to be writhing in pain on the floor. Suprisingly, for the next few days he had NO constipation. (I now recognize that as a very "safe" meal)
Then I found a book called Eating For IBS. Though the diet laid out in this book is too high in refined carbohydrates and sugar for my tastes (sorry, Heather!! I'm still a health nut), the information in it was shocking.
Fiber can be a dangerous? FIBER could do this to MY HUSBAND?!?! Bull crap, I thought. FIBER IS GOOD FOR YOU! (And it is) You can't have TOO MUCH fiber!!! Can you? We decided to try the suggestions.
I don't really believe in miracles, but my husband is now a normal functioning (har har) person. Yes, we reintroduced white flour to our diets(!!) ME, the healthiest nut on the planet! BUYING white flour! I didn't ever see *that* happening.
Now we eat something like this (you will note we still eat quite a bit of insolubles, he just eats them intelligently): Oatmeal with soymilk and fruit, or fruit smoothies, or fat free muffins with 1/2 white and 1/2 whole wheat flour for breakfast; leftovers or sandwiches (made with homemade 1/2 white and 1/2 whole wheat flour bread, pureed beans, marinara sauce or salsa) or soup for lunch (I prefer eating soup everyday, it's much simpler), and a big dinner consisting of a starch center like baked potatoes, pasta, brown rice, corn tortillas or pizza crust (1/2 wh wheat and 1/2 white), some SUPER soft cooked beans (we triple rinse, then soak, then rinse, then pressure cook them for an hour), or tofu, or veggie meat, and a couple servings of steamed veggies. I eat about twice as much veggies (1.5-2 cups) and half as much other food for dinner as my husband. Sometimes we make fat-free, low-sugar brownies, cake or banana smoothie ice cream for dessert.
Results? Even though he's in the most stressful semester of his college life, my husband just commented the other day: Ruthie, I think we're really figuring this out, I haven't had to deal with IBS issues in quite awhile.
*BEAMS!*
*Edited becuze Aye kan't spahell. :-/
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~~ Live simply so that others may simply live. ~~
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One day when this health-nut lady met this IBS-suffering fellow...
